Thomas Edmondson ( 1792) was the inventor of the Edmondson railway ticket.
| From the Lancashire County Council collection |
He started work as a furniture maker. but went bankrupt. After several occupations, he started working as a station master at Milton (later Brampton) on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway at the age of 44. There, he devised the idea of a new type of railway ticket: a small piece of cardboard, pre-printed with journey details (as opposed to the then current hand-written paper bill).
When the Manchester and Leeds Railway opened in 1839, Edmondson became the company's chief booking clerk at Manchester.
The invention which made Edmondson's fortune was his final development: a machine which would print tickets in batches complete with the serial numbers.
The Science Museum has one of Thomas Edmondson's original railway ticket printing and numbering machines, patented in 1840. Before Thomas Edmondson patented this machine, tickets were cut out by hand. With the new method, a skilled operator could print 200 per minute. The machines’ success saw them used around the world and by the 1870s Britain printed more than 500 million tickets in just one year. The last Edmondson press was switched off in 1988, and the use of Edmondson tickets ended a year later.
Edmondson was able to charge a royalty to railway companies amounting to ten shillings per annum per mile of a company's routes.His machines and their improved successors quickly became the standard for British and other railways.
Much more information from the Manchester Locomotive Society
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